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I said.
     
    “Clint Cannon,” he grunted, before picking up his pace and quickly moving out of earshot.
     
    "Oh, good! Just the man I wanted to meet," I muttered. Clint Cannon was listed as the owner of this operation. I was hoping that this surly man would be someone else, someone without the authority to show me around, so I could try to find someone a little friendlier. Oh, well. It couldn't be all bad to get to look at him for the next few hours.
     
    After parking, I grabbed my clipboard and pen, slipped my phone into my pocket, and jumped out of the truck to follow him. I'd learned that no one on a farm took me seriously if I wore a purse, so I made sure that everything I needed could fit into the pockets of my jeans.
     
    It’s hard enough to be taken seriously as a woman on a ranch, I try to at least dress sensibly, in sturdy jeans and a white button-up shirt. I can’t be respected on a ranch in heels or in the office in boots, so I compromise with modest flats that no one loves, but no one scorns.
     
    This man didn't bother to point anything out to me, unlike many farmers and hands, and I still didn't know anything about him but his name, but he allowed me to follow him around the farm. After my visit to the Yates place, I didn’t feel like bothering to insist on going around in the order I usually do. My form on the clipboard is pretty much just a checklist, but it's a ten-page checklist. Fortunately, his own work took him to most of the areas I needed to take a look at.
     
    “Anywhere else?” he asked after a few hours.
     
    “Yeah, I need to take a look at your water source,” I said. “Eyes on. New requirement.”
     
    He sighed. “Look, that’s all the way across the ranch, and we’d have to take horses out. It’d take the rest of the day, and I wanted to take a look at the western fences.”
     
    I winced and looked down at my jeans and shoes. I’d ridden in flats before, but I didn’t like it.
     
    “All right,” I said. “How long a ride out there is it?”
     
    “’Bout an hour, maybe a little more,” he said. “We check the pipes every week or so, I can take you to my office and show you the maintenance logs.”
     
    I sighed. “All right,” I said. “Let’s look at the logs, and I’ll come back tomorrow morning to look at the source.”
     
    The man eyed me and looked as though he had just bitten a lemon, but was trying to keep a poker face – sort of disgruntled, but polite about it.
     
    “I appreciate it,” he said.
     
    We spent the next part of the afternoon looking at the logs. Even though my eyes were almost glazed over with boredom, I thought I saw him glancing at me in a friendlier way a few times, and when he opened the door for me as I left, I could have sworn that I saw his eyes drift down to my chest, and a hint of a blush spread across his tanned face.
     
    I looked up and met his sparkling eyes. I couldn’t resist smiling at him.
     
    My ride away from the Cannon ranch was a lot more cheerful than my ride away from the Yates place.

 
     
     

     
     
    The next day, I started with the long drive out to the ranch. Clint was waiting for me, sipping a cup of coffee and leaning on a hitching post beside another man, having a conversation. Two horses were tethered and tacked up beside them.
     
    I left my car where I’d parked it yesterday, and walked over.
     
    “You know how to ride?” Clint asked, without a hello.
     
    I nodded.
     
    “I’m no barrel racer, but I can stay on a horse’s back okay,” I said. I was dressed for it, with an older pair of jeans and some worn-in boots. I carried my own helmet, too.
     
    He nodded.
     
    “This is Lightning. She’s an old dude ranch pony, pretty easy,” he said.
     
    She was, too. By the time we were a mile out from the ranch, I was wondering if snails outran Lightning.
     
    “Her name is your little joke, isn’t it?” I asked him, out of the silence.
     
    He chuckled, and then looked surprised at